Tata Steel (India) has said the company will focus on the minerals business and is prospecting for titanium dioxide, a key ingredient for paints and high-grade paper, along the Tamil Nadu coast. “The sand along the eastern coast in the states of Tamil Nadu, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh is rich in titanium dioxide. We have narrowed down on Tamil Nadu to begin with and we would start mining in the near future,” a senior Tata Steel official said here. Tata Steel is also focused on chromium and is setting up a Ferro-chrome unit at Richard’s Bay in South Africa. “We are awaiting environmental clearance for the Rs 250 crore unit that will produce 125,000 tonnes of Ferro-chrome annually,” he said. He said that the company was planning to add an additional capacity of 2 million tonnes to its Jamshedpur facility over and above a one million tonne brown-field expansion that was already under way.
